Okay, I didn't finish this sucker. It was poor. I was kind of shocked. I was thinking why does no one point out that this is a giant rip off of Honey I Shrunk the Kids and Honey I Blew Up the Kid? It's painfully obvious. I don't see why this Danial Defoe mope has not had his ass sued, maybe he avoided that by writing his ripoff in a long ass frankly boring olde-worlde style so that all the lawyers would fall asleep before they got their writ typed up. The other stuff that isn't Lillypoot and Borodbynag or whatever is talking horses and shit and I'm pretty sure they're in Lord of the Rings so more ripoff although I never saw that movie all the way through because it's kind of boring and also kind of gay.


ps - some real geek types have PMed me saying that Daniel Dafoe didn't write thia d it was Jonathon Swift. I mean, get a life. They're all dead right? they're like deader than dead. who cares. lol.

I first read a simplified version of this classic fictional travelogue as a child. The kid's version only included the tale about the tiny residents of Lilliput and its rival kingdom, Blefuscu. I never knew until college there was a lot more to the book than just tiny people declaring war over how to eat eggs properly. I had so much fun reading this book in literature class in college. We picked apart the allegory and laughed at the slightly off-color parts of the book. I enjoyed revisiting the travels of Lemuel Gulliver. I'm glad the book was included in the list of 100 books for The Great American Read.

Lemuel Gulliver is shipwrecked and begins keeping a log of all of his adventures. First he meets tiny people who are amazed at the huge Man Mountain. He escapes Lilliput and before finding his way back to England he travels to a land filled with giants, a country filled with great thinkers who are unable to put their knowledge to any practical use, and a country where savage, deformed humans called Yahoos are the slaves of a race of talking horses. When Gulliver finally returns home he has a hard time returning to his normal life and spends much time in the stables trying to talk to his horses.

I enjoyed re-visiting this story. While on the outside it is an interesting adventure tale about Gulliver's strange travels, underneath the adventure there is much allegory about human nature, politics, social norms, prejudice and racism, injustice and corruption. My favorite part is when the Lilliputian ruler's home is burning down and there isn't enough water to put out the fire. So, Gulliver (being so much larger than the very tiny Lilliputians) decides to wing it -- putting out the fire completely by peeing on it. He is then prosecuted for urinating in the ruler's home. Because he did so in order to save the residence, he is shown mercy (cough, cough). Instead of being executed with poisoned arrows shot into his face, they are willing to just put out both his eyes. Another favorite scene is when he is faced with a giant farmer's wife who breast feeds her baby in his presence. Gulliver is quite taken aback at seeing a breast that is 16 feet in circumference, making commentary that flaws in the (ahem) attributes of English women are much easier to hide because they aren't giant and totally in his face.

I love how Jonathan Swift slams much of the nonsense of the human condition and our flaws while hiding his real intent within the fantastical travelogue of Lemuel Gulliver. The book is both hilarious and thought provoking. I'm so glad I re-read this book. I enjoyed it just as much as I did as a child when I only got part of the tale....and again in college when I studied it in full.

Gulliver's Travels is the 11th book that I have read/re-read as part of The Great American Read. The list of 100 books for GAR are listed here: The Great American Read . I am going to try to read as many of the books on the list as I can. 11 down....89 to go! :)

This was my favorite required reading in high school (well, actually, probably tied with Animal Farm). It was a very pleasant and unexpected surprise. The reference points I had were cartoon retellings of this from my youth. I only really had an image of Gulliver vs the Lilliputians - and that was only the most basic "giant in a land full of very small people" storylines (well, they were trying to entertain children, so it doesn't have to get much more complex than that). But, the book is made up of more stories than just Gulliver as a giant (hence the Travels - plural). The content of these stories is witty and not-so-thinly veiled political and social commentary. In the end, it didn't feel like required reading at all - it was a truly enjoyable adventure I was glad to take!

Un testo intramontabile. Un'opera nella quale ci si può fermare alla superficie della narrazione e conoscer mondi straordinari, quanto addentrarsi più in profondità e scoprire l'eco di un relativismo etico e culturale che non farebbe mai male tener sempre presente. Aiuta a crescere e diventare uomini più aperti, tolleranti, completi.

3,5/4

My class read this right after finishing Robinson Crusoe, which, I think, was a perfect decision on my professor's part. In addition to making bold statements about colonialism and slavery, satirizing the hell out of European government and rulers and scientists and just about everything else, Swift is using Gulliver's Travels to write the longest, best parody of Robinson Crusoe ever. He takes Defoe's long-winded, preachy, boring survival story with racist and imperialist overtones, and turned it into a fun adventure story that never misses an opportunity to mock the exploration-story genre or break out some inappropriate jokes (don't worry, I'll get to those.)

The book is divided into four parts, each describing Gulliver's adventures in a different undiscovered part of the world. Part I is Lilliput, which everyone knows about already; Part II is Brobdingnag, where everyone is much bigger than Gulliver (in contrast to Lilliput); Part III is Laputa and some other stuff (it's the worst of the bunch, and reads like it was dashed off at the last minute and shoved in to round out the page count); and Part IV was my favorite, mostly because Gulliver goes to an island inhabited by super-intelligent horses. (10-year-old Madeline: Squeeeee! Talking horses!) It's all funny and exciting (except for previously-mentioned Part III, which is a total slog), but it does have some boring parts. For instance, every time Gulliver is on a ship he has to tell us the exact details of the voyage and dump a bunch of nautical terms on us, and he likes describing things in step-by-step detail. But that's the great thing: by doing this, he's satirizing Daniel Defoe and his boring book about some jackass getting stranded on an island. There are tons of digs at Robinson Crusoe, and my favorite has to be when Gulliver is describing one of his meals on an island and then says, "This is enough to say upon the subject of my diet, wherewith other travellers fill their books, as if the readers were personally concerned whether we fared well or ill." Cue everyone who had to sit through pages of Crusoe's food descriptions breathing a huge sigh of relief.

As I mentioned, Swift is also having fun sticking in some dirty jokes. Right off the bat, when Gulliver is describing his life pre-voyage, he mentions being apprenticed to a man named Bates. We think it's a pointless detail, but then Gulliver refers to him, just once, as Master Bates. My professor assured us that this was very intentional.

The best one was on Lilliput, when the king asked Gulliver to stand with his legs apart so the Lillputian army could ride underneath him like a bridge: "His Majesty gave orders, upon pain of death, that every soldier in his march should observe the strictest decency with regard to my person; which, however, could not prevent some of the younger officers from turning up their eyes as they passed under me. And, to confess the truth, my breeches were at that time in so ill a condition, that they afforded some opportunities for laughter and admiration."

There you have it, folks. This may be the only book on the list of 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die that features the narrator pausing to inform us how absolutely colossal his penis is.

Read for: Colonial Imagination

A very frustrating book, in parts brilliant, in others annoyingly tedious and just boring. Overall and having said that I did like it and am glad that I persevered.

The hardest work and most boring were the passages concerning voyages to: Lilliput and Brobdingnag - once the novelty and dilemmas of being tiny in a world of 'giants' and vice versa had been established, there were what seemed like endless passages concerning how small things were or how big things were at the respective destinations - unfortunately this became somewhat tedious and repetitive in the extreme.

However - I am extremely glad that I persevered as the voyages to Laputa, Balnibarbi, Luggnagg, Glubbdubdrib and Japan were in the main fascinating and as prototype political satire, effective and hugely influential.

Having seen various film adaptations - I never knew that the story extended beyond Lilliput and Brobdingnag, so the book / story was somewhat of a revelation.

My advice to anyone tempted not to bother is to persevere beyond the tedium of the first 20% ish of the book as what follows will definitely be worth the effort.

It's been a while since something so thought-provoking and deep was also so laugh-out-loud funny. Only to those who understand satire, of course.

Meet Lemuel Gulliver, a British surgeon. He is the protagonist and narrator of this book, which consists of 4 parts (most people only know the first, maybe also the second, but not the latter two). He tells of his fantastical voyages and what he went through ... like any good travel literature. ;)

Part 1 is about a voyage from 4 May 1699 to 13 April 1702 during which Gulliver boards a ship but soon after gets shipwrecked and is washed ashore on a South-Indian island where he is taken prisoner by the inhabitants of the (in-)famous country of Lilliput.
There, he is the favorite curiosity of the little people's royal court. Not for long though. Things go terribly wrong, even when Gulliver onlly does his best to help the strange miniature beings who like to argue about the most trivial of things.

Part 2 is about a voyage from 20 June 1702 to 3 June 1706, starting soon after his return from Lilliput therefore. This time, his ship is is blown off course and the crew is forced to go to land in search for drinkable water. Gulliver is left by his crewmates on some peninsula (supposedly on the western shore of the US) called Brobdingnag where people are as tall as trees and Gulliver is the unusually small one for a change.
Once again he is taken in, but he's displayed as a curiosity and eventually sold to the queen, who has a tiny house built for him. The problem, though, is that not only the people are huge here but so is the wildlife ... which becomes a problem.

In part 3, after his safe return to England, Gulliver soon starts on his next voyage that takes place from 5 August 1706 to 16 April 1710 and sees him being attacked by pirates and then marooned on an island close to India. He is rescued by the flying island of Laputa. The people there looooove music, mathematics, and astronomy but never know what to do with them. As it turns out, Laputa is the ruling body of Balnibarbi, where Gulliver visits a ridiculous "academy".
The people wanna help him to get to Japan from where he can make his way home but on the way, he makes a detour to Glubbdubdrib, another island where he starts philosophical discussions with long-dead historical figures, and Luggnagg (also an island) that has immortal but not eternally young epople - with all that entails.

Part 4, after he swore never to go traveling again, sees Gulliver board a ship for a voyage from 7 September 1710 until 5 December 1715 - this time not as a surgeon but the ship's captain. However, his crew was badly chosen and so they mutiny and leave him on the first piece of land they come across. He thus meets some fellow, albeit deformed, humans called Yahoos (yep, that IS where / why the company got its name from) and Houyhnhnms, which are talking horses as well as the Yahoos' slave masters. Gulliver practically falls in love with the Houyhnhnms and their way of life. However, the Houyhnhnms regard him as a threat and send him packing.

Once home in England, Gulliver is forever changed, becomes a recluse, and despises humanity.

Why do I go into such detail? Because what I said is only the set-up of each part and does in no way truly give away what Gulliver encounters in each of those lands. Because what the book is actually about is human stupidity, bureaucracy, slavery and so much more.

The word satire doesn't do justice to Jonathan Swift's writing, it really doesn't. Perhaps that is why his kind of satire - utterly deadpan and ironic - was coined "Swiftian". Seriously, I LOVE dark humour and have therefore read quite a few examples, but I've never ever read anything like this. It was marvelous!

Interestingly, while he had said he didn't want to entertain with this book but offend (so as to make people confront all the issues portrayed here), the book was generally loved! One has to assume all 4 parts even! And yet, over time, despite the book never having been out of print, parts 3 and 4 are usually unknown and never represented in any movie adaptation as far as I know. Worse, there are book editions that leave out especially part 4.

It's entirely possible that one of the modern-day problems is not only people refusing to admit that Swift was and is right, but that many also don't get him. He didn't just write a dry comedy, he was erudite and eloquent so as to make you use your brain. Seems out of fashion.

As with his later work, which I read yesterday, the amazing (and creepy) thing is that this could be contemporary. Travel literature is still well-loved, people are still stupid, politics are still maddening, science is often still done in the "we can, so we do" spirit (look at the invention of AI without us knowing what we're getting ourselves into), slavery is very much alive though often in "disguise", we want the wrong things and generally JUST DON'T GET IT. *lol*

So yes, very good reason why this is a classic and I cackled. Not smiled or chuckled, not even burst out loud but went straight on to cackling!

Biting political satire
9 September 2015

tI'm sure many of us are familiar with the tale of the sailor from England who after a shipwreck finds himself bound to the beach on an unknown island surrounded by a race of people who are substantially smaller that him.



tSome of you are probably even familiar with the not so recent Jack Black film (which I have seen but can't remember much of it beyond Jack Black heading out in a speed boat from Miami and getting caught in a storm).



tFrom a very young age I have always seen this story as a children's book, however it wasn't until I reached university that I discovered that it is actually biting political satire. It is interesting how a book is released in one age and people see it for what it is however as time passes the original intention of the book takes a back seat and the story ends up taking an entirely new meaning. Mind you, the children's tales that we tend to be familiar with are quite watered down to the point that the original meaning has been lost (and most of them only tell the story of Lilliput).

tIt was quite coincidental that in Bible study were were looking at the book of Revelation, another text whose meaning has completely changed throughout the ages, and I immediately thought of Gulliver's Travels. What was originally supposed to be a book that was designed to provided comfort to persecuted Christians in Asia-minor has suddenly become, in some circles, a detailed description of the end of the Earth.

tHowever, I'm not writing about the book of Revelation, I'm writing about Gulliver's Travels, so I will try to remain focused on the task at hand. The problem with this book is that there is so much in it that simply writing a review on Goodreads likes cannot do it justice, so I have decided that it will go onto my 'read again at sometime and write a detailed blog post' pile (though the only other book currently on that pile is Plato's Symposium). Anyway, what I will attempt to do is look at each of his journeys individually and make some comments therein.

tBefore I do that though I probably should say a couple of things about the book as a whole. Okay, it is not the first travel narrative around (the Odyssey pre-dates it by a long shot, and Robinson Crusoe was also written tad earlier – a book that Swift does draw upon in parts), however it does seem be one of those books that has influenced the science-fiction/fantasy genre since. Here we have a traveller heading off into the unknown and discovering societies that are completely alien to our own. At the time much of the world was still unexplored, so Swift creates these undiscovered societies that exist in the unknown corners (most of them being islands in the uncharted ocean). Parts of it even reminded me of Star Trek, where we have the crew of the Enterprise heading off to alien planets and discovering many and varied civilisations thereupon.

tAnother that I picked up as I was reading some of the commentaries was how it stands apart from Robinson Crusoe. In Dafoe's book we have a story of the individual overcoming his struggles to make a life for himself. However it is suggested that Gulliver is different in that Swift is suggesting that it is not the individual but societies that count. However, as we shall see, none of these societies is worthy to be called some sort of Utopia. Even the Houynhnhnms have a dark side about them. The other thing we see is the slow descent of Gulliver into madness. At first he decides to head off to sea for an adventure, particularly since his business in London failed, however after he returns every time he immediately wants to head off again. In fact it seems as if the time he remains in England becomes ever shorter. When he returns the final time, after being exiled by the Houynhnhms, he becomes a recluse and spends the rest of his life talking to horses.

tThis descent is also mimicked by the way he lands up in each of these lands. The first time it is due to a freak storm, the second time he is abandoned, the third time he is attacked by pirates, and the forth time his crew mutinies (which is probably not surprising since the crew that he ended up collecting were probably the last people you would want as the crew of your boat).



Lilliput
tThis is the first realm, and the most well known since most of the productions use this section of the book. Lilliput is probably the closest realm to that of England, and in fact each of the characters represent one of the major figures in English political life at the time. They even have the land of Blefuscu, which is a representation of France. In a way the realm, and in particular the politics, of Lilliput is nothing short of farcical. Swift does not hold back in his criticism of the landscape in which he lives. In a way it is no difference than the world we live in today, and many of us have little respect for our politicians, seeing them as nothing more than a bunch of corrupt clowns.

tThe people of Lilliput and Blefuscu are at war, and the reason behind the war is one of the most absurd reasons around – they both hold different interpretations of a holy book. While we might laugh at the fact that the Lilliputians and the Belfuscians fight over how an egg should be opened, this is sadly what we see with religion today. Everybody has their own interpretation, and sadly there are people who are willing to go to war with each other over their interpretation. The problem with religion is that followers generally resort to a higher power to support their beliefs, and because it is such a fundamental part of their lives, to challenge such a deeply held belief can cause some quite adverse reactions. It is sort of like confronting somebody on meth – the drug causes them to create this reality that is not necessarily true, and when that reality is challenged, the result can be incredibly violent. Sometimes I wander whether many Christians, especially the violent ones, remember Jesus' saying about turning the other cheek.

tSwift also seems to have a problem with imperialism. When the Belfuscians launch an invasion of Lilliput, Gulliver heads out, grabs all of their boats, and brings then to shore, effectively castrating them in one swoop. Upon seeing victory, the Emperor of Lilliput immediately wants to subjugate the Belfuscians, however Gulliver steps in and forbids it. Sure, he may have saved the Lilliputians, however occupying their land is not going to solve any of their problems – it's only going to make it worse. As such the emperor is not happy and finds Gulliver guilty of treason – it seems that kings and emperors are just as blind when it comes to war and politics.



Brobdingnag
tOne of the things that you will notice about Gullivers travels is that it is a story of contrasts – in fact it is a story of opposites. In Lilliput Gulliver is the big man around town. His towering presence dominates the scene - to the point where he is recruited as a weapon of war. Further, he is uncontrollable by the Lilliputians. The opposite is the case when it comes of Brobdingnag. Here he is tiny. In fact the entire situation has been reversed to where he is the size that the Lilliputians were to him. Also the political situation differs as well – in Brobdingnag there is no political maneuvering, and in fact the king and queen are seen as innocent rulers (innocent in that they have no understanding of the political world – and neither do their subjects).

tBeing tiny Gulliver is an object of curiosity, and in fact he spends time as being little more than a carnival attraction. The roles have been completely reversed. In Lilliput he was the big man, and even though he couldn't necessarily change the ideas of the Lilliputians, he did have an influence. Now this has all been taken away from him and in effect he is powerless. Sure, he does tell the queen about his homeland, however this is more quaint curiosity than anything else. Furthermore he is at the mercy of the elements, as is seen when he is attacked by a giant rat, and his food is covered with insect slime.

tBeauty is another thing that is challenged in this section. This is shown in the scene where he sees the two naked women. While those of us who are normal size may be enticed by such an encounter, to somebody of Gulliver's size all he can see are the blemishes. In fact they are so noticeable he is left horrified. The section also works to humble Gulliver, since after visiting the Lilliputians he has trouble adjusting back in England to the fact that he is the same size as everybody else, where as this idea of being the big man is suddenly taken away from him. In a way he goes from being the big fish in the little pond to the little fish in the big pond.



Laputa
tHere we come to see Swift's dislike of the modern scientific community. Laputa is a flying city that dominates its regions by flying over and dropping rocks upon them. It seems that two centuries before the Wright Brothers took to the sky Gulliver was speculating on the power of air superiority. Granted, air superiority isn't all that it is made out to be (the Americans seem to be having a lot of trouble bombing ISIS out of existence, and despite having complete control of the air, Hitler was not able to capture Stalingrad), but here Swift is giving a demonstration of its possibilities.

tHowever, it is not the air superiority that he is exploring, but how he views the ridiculousness of scientific enquiry. This is brought out clearly with the guy who has been charged with extracting sunlight from cucumber and the amount of time it would take to actually get any benefit out of it. It sort of reminded me of my method of turning lead into gold through the use of a nuclear reactor.

tSwift really didn't like the scientific movement, one that was taking England by storm at the time. These days he would probably fall into the category of the Creation Scientist, the one who is mocked at by the scientific community for their dogmatic belief that humanity was created from clay (though I could argue that that is what evolution is suggesting anyway: it is only giving us a process of how it could have come about). However, scientific research was limited to the upper classes, while many of the middle of lower classes were still satisfied with the explanations given to them by the church.

tThe thing with the Laputians is that they consider themselves to be wise but through their actions they show themselves to be foolish. In fact as he wanders through their university he cannot help but see some of the stupid experiments that are going on, such as the attempt to mix paints simply through the use of smell (the people doing the research were blind). Mind you, back in those days the scientific movement had come out of what had originally been considered magic – Isaac Newton had a fascination with Alchemy. My belief is that because there was a perception that the scientific movement would challenge the authenticity of the Bible (or one group's interpretation of the Bible) they felt that they needed to relegate it to the realm of the dark arts.



The land of the Houyhnhnms
tWhile we had a bunch of idiots running around in Laputa, in this place we have a form of idyllic utopia. The Houyhnhnms are actually evolved horses who live in what is effectively an idyllic society. They are wise in their own ways in that they are peaceful and have no understanding of war. One section of this part, were Gulliver is telling them about war, reminded me of a number of other stories where a visitor from an alien planet comes to Earth and is appalled at the fact that we insist on running around and killing each other.

tHowever, the Houyhnhnms are not a perfect race since they subjugate the humans of the region, whom they refer to as yahoos. In fact this is where the term entered the English language (these these days when we hear about Yahoos we automatically think of that internet company have ended up becoming second best to Google). The Yahoos are an uncivilised and barbaric lot, and in a way it seems that the Houyhnhnms want to keep them that way because as long as they remain uneducated they don't pose all that much of a threat.

tGulliver seems to find himself at home here because these creatures live out what was speculated as far back as Plato. We have a communal society that lives at peace, and it is that community that gives them strength. However they are an incredibly racist lot because despite Gulliver being enthralled by their way of life, to them he is nothing more than a sophisticated Yahoo.

I was in error in giving this two stars back when I read this in high school, but not by much. Back then I was bored out of my gourd, here and now I'm done with "I will instinctively know the truth due to my super white able male powers." Regardless of whether 'tis beneficial to give Swift the full benefit of the fictional doubt as is popular in circles of academic aspiration, ugh.

This is the perfect definition of a "classic": male, European, old, punches down on everything in the names of "satire" and "truth" at the expense of ideological stratification, and has enough political statistics melded with workable reality to make an engaging narrative out of a list of opinions. I'm not going to muddle myself with the whole "separation of author and story" rigmarole and indict Swift with anything, but the fictional Gulliver is fair game. His whole "If anyone is offended at my truth they are wrong because look how prettily I write," at the end of it is begging for a "lol nice try."

I will admit that Gulliver develops some nice sentiments at the behest of his multiple hosts. He frowns on colonialism, indicts manipulation of the legal system in the interests of financial engorgement, and views war as an inexcusable horror conducted for the most insipid of reasons. The problem is his whole issue with thinking in general, or leastwise with thinking that he is unable to instantly understand and appreciate for the full measure of its worth, ironic when considering his upholding of Socrates. His is a very "throw the baby out with the bathwater" approach, albeit with some inconsistencies that make his position a typical one in regards to goodwill towards humanity: so long as humanity fits in its proper places of my complex determination without complaint, all's well that ends well. This makes the call for equal education of women alongside a general disparagement of their "typical" (hint: patriarchally indoctrinated) qualities, in addition to a holistic condemnation of humanity as modeled on those with non-European features and especial disparagement of redheads, of little paradigmal worth.

Outside of that, I learned a great deal about Swift's time in terms of England's social, political, economic, religious, and international relations in regards to various other countries. I also understand why the first bits of being Gulliver being tied to the ground are the most popular, for here is where Gulliver sticks to what he knows without aspiring to a hierarchical strata of human relations that smacks of the "Jewish Question" more than anything else (which officially started around 24 years after this publication, rather than my previous assumption of 200. The more you know). In light of that, Gulliver (Swift if you're not squeamish) to me is much like how Tolkien is: knowledgeable in the things knowledge is usually defined by, xenophobic as shown by their respective Houyhnhnms and Elves, and as feudalistic as is permissible by polite society and his own personal characteristics. Tolkien, however, surpasses Swift (I give up) in both quality of story and treatment of women, so while I'm fairly certain a conversation with the former would be a chilly one on account of ideological difference, the latter would probably throw a hissy fit if I made an attempt to disagree.

The best thing I got out of this reread was the discovery of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, whose critically brilliant response to Swift's misogyny was published anonymously and genius socioeconomic indictment entitled "Epistle from Mrs. Yonge to Her Husband" had to wait nearly 250 years until publication. I'm all for truth and goodwill towards humanity, but paying attention to who is writing, whom is being passed over, and other such demographical matters that go into the determination of "truth" and "goodwill" is essential if one wants to say anything at all. Forbearing ownership of a fundamental and unchanging "truthdar" is also a good way to go.

Swift's "Gulliver's Travels" remains as relevant today as it did in the eighteenth century, which is rather impressive for a work of satire. How our culture has reached the point where thousands of Goodreads readers rate this book a 1 or 2 is incomprehensible to me -- and deeply unsettling. It makes me fear that Swift was correct about the Yahoos.

This is my fourth journey with Lemuel Gulliver. My grandmother read of him to me as a child; I read about him for an eighteenth century literature course in college; I read about him again in my late 20s; and then this week, I discovered a heavily annotated paperback copy from 1960 in the basement of my apartment building, and was immediately distracted from my daily life. Of note, this copy of the book (per the title page inscription) once belonged to: "Jeff Hodge, Box 387, Amherst"; if you read this review and happen to know him, please put him in touch with me and I will gladly send his book back to him.

As for Gulliver....In earlier readings, I confess I enjoyed the imaginative elements of the tale as much, if not more, than the satire: Lilliput vs. Blefuscu, the mechanics of the floating island of Laputa, the wild inventions designed in the Grand Academy of Lagado. Swift's imagination is vast and clever, and Gulliver is highly sympathetic (no easy task when describing a creature who is, by design, largely reflective and reactive), although I do feel bad for his neglected wife and children. (His wanderlust may be psychologically accurate and necessary, but it is not endearing.) Yet the relevance of his satire is what makes this as much a novel for the 21st century as much as for Georgian England, and one doesn't have to know the first thing about Whigs and Tories to appreciate it.

In the era of so-called fake news, there is still a compelling wisdom in the shock of the Houyhnhnms on hearing "the thing which is not".

And who can resist both the humor or contemporary relevance of the description of learning at Lagado, which might as easily apply to many top American colleges today (and possibly our political authorities as well):

"In these colleges the professors contrive new rules and methods of agriculture and building, and new instruments, and tools for all trades and manufactures; whereby, as they undertake, one man shall do the work of ten; a palace may be built in a week, of materials so durable as to last for ever without repairing. All the fruits of the earth shall come to maturity at whatever season we think fit to choose, and increase a hundred fold more than they do at present; with innumerable other happy proposals. The only inconvenience is, that none of these projects are yet brought to perfection; and in the mean time, the whole country lies miserably waste, the houses in ruins, and the people without food or clothes...."

Swift may have lived in a world dependent upon sailing ships and horsepower, but his mindset is decidedly modern. His criticism of slavery, class structure, colonialism, gender inequalities in education, and a whole host of troublesome conventions of his age are rather striking. As impressive was his willingness to risk the consequences of publishing a book that directly challenged the ruling party, the established seats of power in the ministry and courts, and the social customs of his fellow citizens. Swift, like Gulliver, is an honest writer who keeps his fellow human beings honest.

Needless to say, this is not a "children's book"; however, it's precisely the sort of book that children should read at an early age and then revisit at multiple times during their lives.

Glad to get the references now: although I could have just read Wikipedia: the Lilliputians are small, the Brobdignagians big, the flying city is whatever, the Houhynhyns are really great (although he's pretty unpersuasive on this -- why are they so great? because they don't have a word for lying? Gulliver grows to love horses so much that he can't speak to his own family when he gets home -- I didn't buy it; I just think he's a misanthrope), and I suppose the most significant use of reading the book is to understand the etymology of the word "Yahoo." I will now call people "Yahoos" with much more relish than I did before.

But the book: not much there. It's a methodical, list-like satire on travel books which are themselves dull. No plot, and no character development to speak of except the persuasion of Gulliver that horses are better than people because people are so awful. He dwells at length on how awful people are, but in the end this just made me think Gulliver was a nasty sort of person who relishes big PJ-O'Rourke-ish generalizations. If I want to hate people, I'll get on a subway. I want books to help me do more than that.